1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting head which has a piezoelectric element provided with a vibration plate including a zirconium oxide layer, a liquid ejecting apparatus and the piezoelectric element.
2. Related Art
As a piezoelectric element used in a piezoelectric device, there is a piezoelectric element in which a ferroelectric layer made of a piezoelectric material that exhibits an electro-mechanical conversion function, for example, a crystallized dielectric material is configured to be interposed between two electrodes. As the piezoelectric element mentioned above, the piezoelectric element provided with a zirconium oxide (ZrO2) layer as a portion of a vibration plate has been known.
Then, a method has been proposed in which a metallic zirconium layer is formed by the sputtering method and the zirconium oxide layer is formed by thermal oxidization of the metallic zirconium layer (Refer to JP-A-2005-260003 and JP-A-2005-294438).
In the related art mentioned above, a zirconium oxide is preferentially oriented with a (−111) plane to achieve improved adhesion between a ground layer and a zirconium oxide film. However, even in a piezoelectric element having the above-mentioned structure, the adhesion between the zirconium oxide layer and a first electrode provided on the zirconium oxide layer, and the adhesion between the zirconium oxide layer and a silicon oxide film provided under the zirconium oxide layer are insufficient, thereby leading to a decrease in reliability.
A patent has been filed previously based on the knowledge that the above-mentioned disadvantages in adhesion can be solved by forming the zirconium oxide through a liquid-phase method. However, in forming of the zirconium oxide by the liquid-phase method, another disadvantage such as occurrence of a crack has been manifested.
The above-mentioned disadvantage is present not only in an actuator mounted on a liquid ejecting head such as an ink jet type recording head, but also in the actuator mounted on other devices as well.